


Midnight Steaks

by pathsofpassion



Series: Second Chances Verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bunker Fluff, Dean Has Issues, Emma Has Issues, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Food, Food Issues, Gen, M/M, Post-Purgatory, cas is just kinda glad to be there, steak, vague timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 04:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3596331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pathsofpassion/pseuds/pathsofpassion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean can't wave a magic wand and make Emma's life good, erase all of the ways he's fucked it up. But maybe he can at least get her to eat something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Steaks

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the DestiAww day on tumblr. Figured I'd cross-post here. What it says on the tin. Is decidedly Destiel, but the focus is Dean and Emma's relationship.

The steaks sizzle in the pan, and yeah, they need his attention, he wants to get them just right, but that’s not why he doesn't turn around.

Dean saw her waft into the doorway out of the corner of his eye, his own personal (non-literal) ghost, and if he handles this wrong at all, if he turns too quickly or looks at her too severely or smiles too falsely, Emma will be gone again. The bunker is half a dozen stories and sub-basements of places to hide, unexplored dusty corners and crawlspaces and rooms they haven’t even _opened_ yet; Emma spent two years in Purgatory surviving on her ability to hide when she could and fight when she couldn't.

He doesn't have a snowball’s chance in hell of finding her if she bolts.

Again.

So Dean presses on the top of the steaks with his spatula, and they feel nearly done. He’s aiming for rare, _rare_ -rare, seared perfectly and seasoned lightly because too much pepper makes Emma sneeze. He’d hoped, when he left Cas sleeping in his(their) bed and fired up the stovetop, that the scent of food might draw his daughter out from wherever she was currently holing up.

His daughter.

Sam had brought her and Benny back from Purgatory, both, and not one of the three is talking about how that went down. Emma tolerates being in the same room as Sam only barely, still, not that Dean blames her.

It’s good that they’re not trying to kill each other. He wonders, vaguely, how fucked-up his family has to be that he counts _not actively murderous_ as a hell of a positive step.

Pulling the steaks out because they’re right, just right, Dean plates them to let them rest. Dares to speak, low, as he’s putting two separate slabs of meat on two separate plates, and Emma’s is fucking huge because he doesn't know if she’s even _eating_ , “Gotta let these sit for a minute. Makes ‘em taste better.”

Dean doesn't hear an answer, but he doesn't hear the patter of teenage feet dashing away either, so he takes a deep breath and reminds himself that he survived _hell_ and he turns around, slowly. She’s still there in the doorway, and she doesn't even look like she’s thinking all that hard about running. He’ll take his victories where they come.

She’s so. Damn. Young.

Standing there in the jeans and flannel he bought her at a Goodwill, guessing her size and taking them out to the car because she wouldn't go inside, Emma looks like a dozen contradictions. The clothes say outdoorsy girl, maybe hunter-chic; the tense posture and wary eyes say _predator_. But the kind of predator that’s only midway up the food chain, fidgety and always poised to run cause she has to worry about things hunting her as well as her own prey. She’s got his eyes, the shape of his face, delicate and pretty when her features aren't feral, when her eyes aren't yellowy gold instead of green. She looks like a teenage girl, looks like she should be laughing with her friends and wasting Saturdays at the mall.

Mostly she looks like she’s his, like she breaks his heart every damn day.

“Come on,” Dean coaxes, throat thick because he’s a shitty parent in the first place (see: Ben), and he’s been far shittier to her, in ways he will never, ever be able to make up, than even John Winchester managed. He’s careful to keep his posture casual, leaning with his ass against the counter next to the stove, arms folded and legs crossed at the ankle. Easy. Restful. Nothing to run from, nothing hunting them here, Em, can’t you see?

No. No she probably can’t.

Still, Emma takes a few steps forward, sniffs the air. She has language, English, she didn't forget it all in Purgatory, but he knows. He remembers how you lose the taste of words in your mouth in that place, how your voice starts to go silent. Dean had Benny and Cas to talk to, pray to, curse at. Emma had nobody.

“Steak?” That’s not an outright no, and he tries to keep his smile contained to just the crook in the corner of his mouth.

“Steak. If you sit down.” He doesn't know where the lines are, _ever_ , cause he’s her father but he’s not her _Dad_ , no matter how much he wants to be. The only damn authority he has over her is that she lives in his home and he took part in making her, unknowing and blind. Dean doesn't see that he has any right to tell her what to do or give her advice or fucking _raise her_ , except that she doesn’t have anyone else to do those things for her and also he wants to, fuck, he wants to so damn badly.

He tries to be careful. Thinks that if he doesn't overstep too much, doesn't try to run ragged over her, maybe she’ll let him have just a little slice.

Emma sits, and Dean brings both the plates to the table. Sets them across from each other so they’re not too close, so she’ll be able to watch him while she eats. Goes back for knives, forks, then takes the chair opposite and sits. He’s not sure what to do with his hands. Or his mouth, but he’s got worse control over that so it just starts – going. “Can’t eat ‘em, just yet, wanna let ‘em set for a few more minutes. Gotta let meat rest so the juices soak back in, so it reaches the right temperature. These,” and Dean demonstrates, pokes the top of his steak with his fork, “are gonna be rare. Just like this, see?” Dean touches his left thumbtip and fingertip together, then presses his right index finger into the flesh just below the joint of his thumb. “When it feels like that, it’s rare.”

She watches him, too-familiar green eyes staring, then copies the motion. Tests the steak, then the meat of her hand, and her head fucking tilts. Like Cas at his angel-est, wondering at the vagaries of these weird human creatures. It doesn't make his heart thump. It doesn't.

As if he’d been summoned by Dean’s thoughts – he might have been, is somewhere between fallen and not, right now, part angel and part grouchy human – Cas’s voice comes from the hallway, a rough, “Dean?” that straightens Emma up, makes her shoulders hunch defensively. She doesn't relax, exactly, when Cas steps into the kitchen light, but she gets… less taut, maybe.

She tolerates Cas better than Sam, better than Dean, better than anyone but Benny. She’s wary of him, sure, she recognizes a superior non-human when she sees one, but she also seems to know that he’s not part of her hunting hierarchy. Angels aren't predators, don’t seem to ping her radar the way Benny does. She recognizes hunter in Benny, recognizes herself in him and that he’s bigger and stronger and older (according to Benny), so they get along like a house on fire most of the time. Cas… Cas seems to just confuse the hell out of her.

Dean sympathizes.

Hell, he and Cas finally untangled enough of the mess between them for Cas to be spending the nights he sleeps in Dean’s bed, and Dean still isn't sure he _gets_ Cas.

“We’re just havin’ a midnight snack,” he calls quiet-like, hoping that Cas will recognize the warnings and pleas in his tone for what they are. Cas smiles, so Dean figures he got the _don’t scare her but don’t go_ request pretty clearly.

“I see that. Hello, Emma.” The angel ambles forward, dressed in Dean’s t-shirt and Dean’s pajama bottoms cause he can’t be assed to get his own damn clothes, and Dean’s offered to take Cas shopping but he hasn't really _tried_ all that hard either. So sue him; he likes the sight of the angel wearing his stuff.

“Castiel.” She pronounces his name with careful perfection, closer to how Cas himself says it than even Dean gets when he bothers to use the whole thing. Dean doesn't know how Emma feels about him and Cas being – together, hell, doesn't know if she even cares, but she manages something like a half-smile for the angel and it kind of. Hits him.

She’s trying too.

Cas gives him a look as he sits down, one part _Oh, Dean_ to two parts _You’re just figuring this out now?_ , and they’re gonna have a talk about mind-reading the next time he gets Cas back into bed. Or not, because Cas reading his mind _in_ bed is pretty awesome, but that isn't the point either because Emma’s _trying_.

Maybe just as hard as he is. Maybe she’s even more lost because she was a person for like, three _days_ before she went to monster hell, but for all the hiding and the scared tension she’s here, she’s sitting down, she’s in the fucking bunker when she could leave any time, and his heart kind of painfully thumps because maybe if they’re both fucked up and both trying they can meet somewhere in the middle.

Dean clears his throat, rubs his hand over his mouth to disguise any tattle-tell trembling, and jerks his head up at his daughter. “Probably can eat ‘em now,” he says, and cuts into his steak, rarer than he likes it but he’s hoping that it’ll be to her taste.

Emma and him and Cas sit, and stay, and she eats the whole thing.


End file.
